


the road not taken

by fvckradio



Series: Massachusetts [4]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Family Issues, Friendships falling apart, Home for Christmas, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Past Huang Ren Jun/Lee Donghyuck | Haechan, Post-Break Up, friends to lovers to strangers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28024683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fvckradio/pseuds/fvckradio
Summary: "I'm stayin' at my parents' houseAnd the road not taken looks real good nowAnd it always leads to you and my hometown"(Renjun never meant to come home after he left.)
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun & Lee Donghyuck | Haechan, Huang Ren Jun/Lee Donghyuck | Haechan
Series: Massachusetts [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1796194
Comments: 12
Kudos: 24





	the road not taken

**Author's Note:**

> Someone I know said that Evermore feels very strongly like coming home for the holidays. He followed it up with some of us have shitty relationships with our parents. This one is for 'tis the season, for giving me ridiculous feelings over relationships I was long over. I wrote this in the middle of the night after a few too many tense nights.  
> There was a deeper metaphor here about choosing different paths than you did the last time, but I missed that mark a little bit.
> 
> Just a fair warning, there are no current romantic relationships. Those are long decomposed.

The screendoor slams as Renjun steps onto the porch. Ice cold air nips his nose. A nor’easter is projected for the weekend, and the snow is just starting to fall in fluffy white clumps. It’s just starting to stick to the grass and his car. His fingers twitch. He thinks, briefly, this will be the first time snow has touched his skin in a year.

Renjun takes the first step down and out into the weather. Snow falls cold and wet on his face and distracts from what he knows would otherwise be tear tracks if he wasn’t steeled from weeks away and years of anger. He huffs, distress still standing in his chest, and walks to his car. Snowflakes are just starting to stick to the windshield, but it doesn’t look like he’ll have to scrape it. It’s nothing the defrost button can’t fix. His hands shake with cold as he unlocks the door to his beat-up Honda.

He closes the car door behind him with the same fervor he used to shut the front door and the slam echoes in his empty car. It’s just as cold as it is outside, but the air is stiller. HIs seat is wrong, and his mirrors need to be adjusted from his mother taking the car out twice a month, just to keep it running. His fingers twitch from their place on the steering wheel. He sighs, loud and angry as he starts the engine.

It will take a few minutes to warm up, so he takes the time to finally take a breath. Frustration bubbles in his chest like liquid in a cauldron threatening to boil over. Coming home for the holidays was supposed to be easy, but this is like pulling teeth. It stings every time he’s met with a different off-hand comment or snide jab. Family dinners hold a tension he hasn’t felt since he was sixteen and they couldn’t stop fighting. Now, the three of them eat in silence. He knows it is his fault, hears his father’s whispers that he never tells them anything. Renjun doesn’t want to tell them anything. His final grades stay wrapped up like a secret, only letting out a hint when he had to reassure them that his GPA is fine. He knows they’ll keep asking but Renjun has always been good at keeping secrets from his parents.

Every day feels like a fight and he can’t stop feeling guilty about it. Even the arguments that aren’t his fault stick to him like a second skin. It’s been a week since he got back and he already feels like he is going to explode. The warm air is just starting to blow and it reminds him of soft blue sheets and softer hands. Before he can stop himself he opens the contact he hasn’t looked at since August and sends a message. He tosses his phone into his passenger seat and switches the gear into reverse.

Driving down the roads he grew up in is different after so long away. They aren’t familiar to him anymore. He doesn’t recognize the cars or the Christmas lights. In the hallowed out hours of the early evening, he navigates places he used to know like the back of his hand. Renjun keeps the radio off and drives in silence. Despite the time and the distance, he can still find his way to their high school. Four years of rides engrain a route even when it doesn’t feel natural anymore. His skin crawls and he feels like a stranger as he pulls into a street spot by the church. A week before the holidays and the streets are empty, just him and his rage.

He almost forgets why he’s there before his phone buzzes on the seat beside him.

**Donghyuck**

Where are you?

I’m in the church parking lot.

Do you want to meet by the park?

**Donghyuck**

No

His chest cools, just a little, as he thinks of Donghyuck’s red nose cold. Renjun used to laugh at him, but he regrets it now. In his college town, Donghyuck’s nose would never be that bright Rudolph red he always teased him for. He skips over the part that Donghyuck has never been to his college town, will never be in his college town. He sees his headlights and he sits up just a little straighter.

Donghyuck’s got the same car he did in high school, a little Toyota he always called his baby. Renjun is familiar with his car, more than he is with his own. Most of his memories of these streets involve his feet kicked up on Donghyuck’s dashboard as they took late-night trips to shitty fast-food restaurants. He is more familiar with Donghyuck’s passenger seat than anywhere else in Massachusetts. He aches for that safety again.

Renjun perks up as he watches Hyuck park a few spots away from him. The anger has melted down to a forgettable pool at the bottom of his body. The giddy feeling of seeing a friend after so long rises to his head like hot air and clouds his vision. It sinks when Donghyuck steps out of the car.

Renjun thinks he looks different. He’s wearing a coat that he doesn’t recognize, with a scarf pulled up all the way over his nose. If he looks close enough he’ll recognize it from someone else they know, but secretly Renjun wants to pretend he doesn’t know whose scarf that is.

He doesn’t even get the chance to unbuckle his seat belt before Donghyuck is sliding into his passenger’s seat. The cold slips in with him and settles over them with an icy tension. Donghyuck is the first to break it, as always.

“I didn’t know you were back in town,” he says. His eyes don’t lift from his hands. Renjun wants him to look at him.

“I’m home for the holidays,” Renjun replies, breathlessly. “My mother insisted.”

Donghyuck makes a noise of understanding. If anyone knows him, it’s Hyuck. His hands ache to reach out and just touch, touch, touch. The ache doesn’t just belong to him, so he keeps his hands to himself.

“How have you been?” he hesitates to ask. He doesn’t want to hear the details of what Donghyuck has been up to without him, he just wants to fast forwards to the part where they go back to normal.

Hyuck seems to hesitate too. His voice is far away as he replies, “I’ve been fine. You know, same old. How’s the big city?”

The bitterness is subtle enough that Renjun wouldn’t notice it if he hadn’t spent years acquainting himself with every nook and cranny of Donghyuck. It stings if he thinks about it too long, which he is prone to do, and he has to hold himself back from wincing in reaction. Hyuck hadn’t come to say goodbye to him before he left. He hadn’t even answered his texts before they had taken off for his out of state school. It hits him then that this is the first time he’s seen his best friend face to face in four months.

The longest they had gone without talking was the three weeks they fought in eighth grade. It had been silly then, not even significant enough to remember. Renjun wishes he could go back to that. He’d pick the middle school silent treatment over whatever this was any day.

“It’s… it’s fine. Different. It’s good.” His words are choppy, foreign in his mouth. Even he doesn’t believe what he’s saying. It’s anxious, forced. “I passed everything, so that’s good.”

Hyuck softens. He finally looks up at him, offering a confidential smile.

“Ah, Renjun, I always knew you could.”

For a moment, the warmth hangs in the air. It’s intimate and recognizable. It brings him back to warm July.

It breaks with the ring of a cell phone.

“Sorry,” Hyuck says. He has the kindness to sound embarrassed. “It’s Mark. Sorry, we’re going to get lunch tomorrow.”

The stinging is back. Renjun decides to not let it hurt him. Donghyuck is still here, with him, in his car. He still picked him first.

“It’s fine.” The tension is thick again. A small part of him wishes he was back at his parent’s dinner table. He shakes that off.

“So, why’d you text me?” Donghyuck cuts to the chase. He knew this was coming but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t catch him off guard. He isn’t used to Donghyuck questioning his motivation for reaching out to him.

“I—” His voice catches. “I just needed to get out of that house.”

Even if Hyuck hated him, he would understand how he was feeling. Renjun was taking a chance texting him; as sure as he was that Hyuck would reply, he still had that voice reminding him that he wanted nothing to do with Renjun anymore.

“That still doesn’t answer my question,” Hyuck sighs. He looks cozy, even in the unfamiliar place on Renjun’s right. “Why’d you text me, what do you need?”

He knows the answer but he’s too afraid to say it out loud, too afraid to make it real, too afraid to be rejected again. Trying not to think about the fact that his perpetual invitation has been revoked is hard. Trying to think about going back to his parent’s house is harder. He takes a deep breath.

“I can’t go back there tonight.”

The silence settles. Donghyuck picks at his fingernail. Renjun picks at the steering wheel. They’ve barely looked at each other the entire time they’ve been in the car. He’s so far out of his element. It’s a sick reminder that they don’t fit together anymore. A question of if they ever did.

Hyuck’s sigh cuts the cold air.

“You can stay over,” he says slowly. “Mom has been asking about you anyway, she’ll be happy to see you. You can stay for the weekend, since there’s going to be a storm.”

“Donghyuck…”

“Just follow me home, Renjun. Or go back to your parents. Please.” Renjun shuts up. Donghyuck gathers himself then lets himself out of the car. Renjun sits frozen as he watches him walk back over to his own car. The snow is heavier now, they’ll have to drive slow. That’s fine, it’ll give Renjun more time to think about what he’s doing, about if Donghyuck will let him kiss him again, about if he’ll hold his hand, just for the weekend. Hyuck’s headlights flash on, and Renjun pulls himself together.

He will follow Donghyuck to his house and he will say hello to his mother like the summer never happened and he has no idea if he will sleep in Donghyuck’s bed. Come Monday he’ll gather his things and climb back into his car. He’ll go home and they’ll go back to not talking. Renjun was never meant to come back after he left. Donghyuck had no intention to leave.

But it isn’t Monday yet. So Renjun switches the gear to drive and follows Donghyuck home for the weekend.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/realitysuh)


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